Made a start on the control panel, Non of this new fangled DCC trickery here!
When I started planning this layout I did think about both changing to EM gauge and using DCC but, then I looked at all of my locos and stock and a rough costing of conversion was beyond my disposable income, Anyway, I enjoy wiring and electronics anyway so the decision was made to stick with analogue control and conventional wiring.
Two multicore cables with 25way D type connectors connect the panel to the layout.
The circuit board at the back is just a 12V DC distribution block bought from one of my regular suppliers on E Bay.
There are still a few wires to be connected. I'm testing and checking as I go along rather than complete all the wiring in one go only to discover that I made a mistake somewhere and have to start fault finding. Testing after each wiring session ensures all is going well and it will all work when finished.
Again still more wiring to be done.
There is NO track power in the panel, all section switches and servo motor drivers being controlled by relays operated by the switches shown.
There is no point in bringing track power wiring into the panel only to go out again after switching,
Using this method keeps all the track wiring short and helps to prevent any volt drop through cables and connectors.
The track layout diagram is made from aluminium sheet laminated with Plasticard.
Tracks are represented by using various coloured tapes. The colours of the tapes matching the colour of the toggle switch covers making it easy to see which switch controls each section.
All points and signals are operated via servo motors and the toggle swithes for these have grey covers.
There's still a lot to do as you can see, some of the indicator LEDs have yet to be fitted and wired back to relays controlled by the servo positions, the same relays also take care of frog polarity switching.
Ah well, back to doing a bit more wiring and another update on progress soon.
Cheers
Frank
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